Tag: sexuality

Sex, a biological function of reproduction, should be simple. We need to perpetuate the species, we have sex, babies are born, we raise them , they have sex, repeat. Simple, however, is one thing sex most certainly is not. And it’s only getting more complex by the day.

For those who are fans of human exceptionalism, it might be worth considering that the trait which differentiates us from all other animals is that we over-complicate everything. Sex, and its various accoutrements of sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, libido, and even how many partners one may have, contains a multitude.

Recently some psychologists have said that pedophilia is a sexual orientation, the erotic predilection that drives people like former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky to do what he allegedly did. This idea came to twitter and incited a minor firestorm over whether “sexual orientation” should really be applied to pedophilia. Nature editor Noah Gray used the term in a neutral sense, as in, “an attraction to a specific category of individuals”; io9’s Charlie Jane Anders and Boing Boing blogger Xeni Jardin pointed out the queer community’s long campaign to define sexual orientation only as an ethically acceptable preference for any category of consenting adults. Given that willful troglodytes like Rick Santorum regularly conflate homosexuality with pedophilia and zoophilia, you can see where the frustration around loose use of the term might arise.

Santorum aside, how should we classify pedophilia if not a “sexual orientation?” Why should that term include should one unchosen, inborn form of sexual attraction, but exclude another unchosen, inborn form of sexual attraction?

While we may have ready answers for these questions now, technological and social changes on the horizon will once again challenge our definitions and beliefs about sex. We can imagine a time when we have artificial intelligence (to at least some degree), or super-intelligent animals, or maybe we’ll even become a spacefaring species and encounter other alien intelligences. Without a doubt, people will start discovering that they are primarily attracted to something that isn’t the good ol’ Homo sapiens. Sex and sexuality will increase in complexity by powers of ten. If some person is attracted to a sexy cyborg, or a genetically enhanced dolphin, how will we know if it is ethical to act upon those desires?